


the distances are far between us

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 01:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10478520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: Conflict resolution has never been Mingyu's strong suit.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i'm how 5 minutes after i posted this gyuhao started a vlive called mingyu and the8's AFTERNOON DATE (even tho seokmin showed up later irrelevant)
> 
> it was 2:21 am and i was supposed to be asleep in my dorm room but instead i was watching on dwindling 15% battery. thanks to this fic.

Mingyu is bored.

Maybe it was the comeback and the fanservice they did because they could and because it was easy, or it was having too much free time to hang out after, because he’s tired.

Of Minghao.

 

 

Seokmin says, “Mingyu, do you want to go out for bowling?”

“I’m going to sleep,” he answers, muffling his face into a pillow. Not his, probably Chan’s, who sleeps with two, but Mingyu’s just fell on the floor and whoever was supposed to clean the room evidently didn’t.

“He said no, Myungho.” Seokmin looks to the door, hallway seemingly empty, no response.

Mingyu lifts his head and narrows his eyes accusingly. “You didn’t say it was with Myungho,” he hisses.

“Myungho invited you. There. Does it change your answer?” Seokmin lifts an eyebrow.

“...No. You should have told me though.” Mingyu’s tone turns childish and sulky.

“You know, if you’re going to let your guard down because I know you’re having issues, and frankly have been for ages, you should at least have the decency to explain what’s going on to me.”

“I’m going to sleep. Have fun.”

 

 

It’s a mystery to Seokmin how this is the same guy who was screaming his lungs out at karaoke the day before, who was telling awful jokes he learned from Wonwoo five hours ago, who just finished video-calling his younger sister with the biggest grin on his face.

On the other hand. this is the same guy who didn’t return Minghao’s high five when hip-hop team got a score of 99 singing Block B’s Her, who seemed completely unaffected by Minghao’s high pitched laughter, whose face was blank when his sister asked him to pass on her greetings to his best friend.

His best friend.

 

 

“Okay, fine,” Seokmin says, and he walks out. “I think you need to be alone.”

Mingyu grumbles, unable to disagree and unwilling to recognize it. When he hears Seokmin’s footsteps fade and the sounds mingle with the boys’ conversations he turns over in his bed and stares at the ceiling. He owes Seokmin an apology, but right now he doesn’t want to think about anything.

It's just white, so there’s nothing to look at. A gradient of white to gray thanks to the lighting, Mingyu thinks, because he’s aware of this but he can’t muster the energy to get his phone and he’s not settled enough to be able to sleep so he overanalyzes the paint job instead.

 

 

It wasn’t an overnight change of feelings, but the effects were jarring enough to seem like one. One day Mingyu leans in close, the next he moves away, but he doesn’t come back. The push and pull stops, the oscillator is damped and the friction drives them to a slow death.

Hansol tosses the baseball vertically into the air, wrist moving rhythmically as he catches and throws, catches and throws. “I don’t think he hates you, hyung.”

“How do you know,” Minghao says, adrift and disoriented. Mingyu has been distant for weeks.

“If he actually hated you I think he’d try even harder to pretend he still liked you. You know, for the sake of the group and everything. No internal strife allowed, right?” The ground underneath is cold and wet from the afternoon rain, but they both lie down as comfortable as anything, hair mixing in with the long green grass. Hansol grins cheekily, and Minghao runs his hand through his bangs, muscle memory from promotions.

“Well, that helps a lot. Thanks,” Minghao says sarcastically, having hoped for a real answer, surprised to discover this may have been one.

 

 

Minghao walks into the room. The blankets are crumpled around Mingyu’s feet, the corner of his comforter overlapping his right leg, his left exposed to the elements. He observes a blinding white stain on Mingyu’s plain black t-shirt.

“This looks so pathetic.”

“Yeah, well.”

“We’re going to get frozen yogurt right now, loser. Get up.”

Mingyu wants to pretend to be exhausted or fight until Minghao gets pissed and leaves to vent his anger elsewhere. Sadly, Minghao can see right through him no matter what he tries, and there’s no one more annoyingly, unreasonably persistent. They aren’t “matching personalities” for nothing.

“Bowling?” Mingyu asks, making eye contact with Minghao for the first time in days.

“Cancelled.”

Besides, he wants blueberry with cookie crumbles on top.

 

 

They order filled-up paper cups with tart sweetness, sprinkled with toppings that harden thanks to the proximity to cold and leave the shop, blasted with the warm spring night air.

Mingyu wants to say something, whatever to get this guilt off his mind, but the words don’t come to him.

“Let’s just not say anything for a while,” Minghao says, as if he’s reading Mingyu’s thoughts. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Like five minutes.”

“Sure,” Mingyu responds. They walk along the street, dimly lit, glancing into the bright stores on their way home.

The road is gravelly and narrow, and the journey is noisy. Two cars honk aggressively at them for walking side by side, as the boys lean up against the concrete wall to let them slip by.

“Instead of in like, a single file line,” Minghao says, snorting. “Cute idea.”

Mingyu laughs. Minghao turns to look at his expression, probably thinking something like _hey, glad to know I still mean something to you._

“I really, really. Don’t know why I’ve been like this.” Mingyu figures he doesn’t have to explain what he’s talking about.

“Neither do I,” Minghao says with a nonchalant shrug, watching him.

“I think I just needed a break.”

“Ouch.” Minghao plays it off, sounding lighthearted and teasing but it’s just a front. Mingyu can see it in his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been tired of me, Myungho. I’ve felt you ignore me.”

“I’ve been in a bad mood, sure,” Minghao says calmly, scraping the melted yogurt from the base of the paper container. “But you’re not in a real bad mood. You’re in this perpetual happiness that only seems to end when you have to acknowledge my existence.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Mingyu stresses. He bites his cheek by accident, and he can taste the iron in his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Minghao says. “I’m not, you know, devastated or anything. You can’t control how you feel. I get it.”

“Do you though?” He realizes belatedly this is a useless, salt-in-the-wound question.

“What if I don’t?”

Mingyu doesn’t know what to say again, and they lapse into silence.

 

 

The dorms are a turn right, but Mingyu walks ahead and leads them left, so they can walk in circles until this works itself out, as he desperately hopes it will.

“I don’t know if you’re emotionally capable of responding to this right now,” Minghao says finally. “But I’ve been thinking.”

“About?”

“The future. Will you miss me years from now when we’re not together?”

“What do you mean,” Mingyu starts, naively focusing on the rusty numberplates on the houses they pass instead of the topic at hand, but Minghao continues.

“You know, when we disband probably-”

“Myungho! That's not-”

“Or even if you go into acting and I have my own studio in China-”

“What makes you think you’re talented enough to have that,” Mingyu scoffs, jokingly and nervously, because why not when Minghao somehow sounds too serious and flippant at the same time-

“-we’re probably not gonna see each other twice in the same month.” Minghao stares into the abyss of black sky, in the direction of nothingness. It's too cloudy for the stars to be visible.

“That’s a gross exaggeration. What even is this conversation, Myungho.”

“Yeah and then what?” he asks, ignoring Mingyu but addressing him anyway. “You’re going to be distant physically then too? Maybe we won't even know each other anymore.”

“If you’re going to play this card,” Mingyu says, struggling to find his words and his bearings.

“Yeah?”

“If you’re going to play this card. I’m going to have new friends and I’m going to forget about you.”

Minghao stops walking.

“Ok. I just. Don't think I can do that.”

Mingyu turns to him and shakes his shoulders hard to get him out of the daze he's in. “What is this conversation, Myungho. We're never ever going to stop being friends. You're ridiculous.”

Minghao clutches Mingyu's sweatshirt, realizations dawning on his face.

“Distance has never stopped us. How do you think we became friends in the first place?”

“Don't make me cry in public,” Minghao says, turning his face away.

“I can't believe you believed me.” Mingyu laughs, pulling Minghao’s head to his shoulder. “There, no one has to see.”

They reach the intersection again, and Minghao makes the wrong turn by accident, tugging Mingyu with him by the strings of his hoodie, lost at the end of longing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [mingyu’s empty expression when dino was talking about gyuhao as roommates](https://twitter.com/4O6x11O7/status/845964823011753984) because i only know SADNESS.  
> [insp #2 ](https://youtu.be/B32gOkYynDk) & [insp #3 ](https://youtu.be/gGcsPoed7vc)(stan pristin) and [insp #4](https://twitter.com/mangowuxu/status/834385363053510656) omg im so emo abt this tweet
> 
> (i rly believe you can care about people a lot but overexposure can make you need a break there are many reasons mg could have had that expression and this is one interpretation)
> 
> i’ve been trying to write happy in universe gyuhao for 3 MONTHS... can we just accept that it’s impossible. im tired of emotionallyvulnerable!minghao take him away from my cruel hands


End file.
